Having agreed that we could go to Chippenham Folk Festival for the Bank Holiday weekend, while he deigned to visit home and be spoilt by our neighbour, the Skipper was anxious to be off and resume hostilities with Otto, the new kid in town, who had taken up residence next door. But by the time we’d sorted out everything, it was too late to get a train and fetch a car, so the evening was spent on a quick exploratory look around Tewkesbury.

A first glance made it clear that sitting at the junction of the rivers Avon and Severn, and being prone to flooding recently, there was some heavyweight water manipulation stuff all around.

Tewkesbury is apparently renowned for its myriad little alleys off the High Street: here are a couple (including one especially for some reneging crew members). Not sure if it’s renowned for strangely named Estate Agents, but it’s got one of those too.

There were plenty of interesting looking buildings, too…

… as well as the famous Abbey at the other end of town, so we determined to spend a day or so exploring on our return, and soon spotted some decent visitor moorings outside the marina, right by the bridge and the lock down onto the Severn.

The bridge lies between two famous old pubs: The White Bear and The Black Bear. They have build a new block of flats between the two pubs, and the access road into them shows that some councils have a sense of humour.

And so, having travelled home by train and returned avec voiture on the Tuesday, an early start to the chauffeur’s birthday on Wednesday saw us driving Sir home, then going out for a splendid steak dinner, while looking forward to resuming the exploration of Tewkesbury after the Chippenham festivities.